Paul Stanley on Rock Hall of Fame: ‘I Don’t Know Who is Doing the Voting’

Paul Stanley is kissing and telling, giving his take on Kiss‘s Rodney Dangerfield-esque “no respect” treatment from the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Stanley said “I don’t need validation from an organization where I don’t even know who is doing the voting,” adding a fact not talked about outside the inner circles, “There are board members who have said, ‘Kiss won’t get in as long as I’m alive.’”

Not that the rock hall ignoring a long line of classic rock artists is news, although the topic comes around again every year when it’s induction time. “I know that it’s important to a lot of the fans,” Stanley continued, “Certainly if we were to get inducted, I would accept it on behalf of the fans, because it matters to them.”

As previously reported, band mate Gene Simmons said there was a simple solution to the Rock Hall issue, “We’ll just buy it and fire everybody.” That would probably make the band’s legions of fans happy, but the real issue is the way the rock hall decides these things. The set of criteria seems to fluctuate at the whims of the powers that be.

“Somehow in some of these people’s warped perspective, being commercially successful or being adept at marketing yourself somehow is contradictory to art and music,” Stanley adds. So this year, as Laura Nyro is inducted, but not Kiss, Paul summed it up this way, “I happen to be a huge fan of Laura Nyro, she was a very brilliant writer, but her music is not rock and roll.” Well said, Starchild!